The Golden Scales Read Online Free

understand the reason for Umm Ali’s excitement. It wasn’t much of a suit, the kind you might pick off the rack at Omar Effendi’s – the state-run department stores. Makana had one himself somewhere. But this man looked uneasy, as if his bulk was about to burst the seams at any moment. His expression said he would have been more at home directing a donkey to and from a muddy field. He was cultivating a rather silly little moustache to lend him an air of sophistication, but the stains on his trousers said he had eaten fava beans with olive oil for breakfast, just like the rest of the country.
    ‘Would you mind standing further over to that side?’ Makana asked. ‘Only the boat tilts if there is too much weight on the outside.’
    The gorilla stared back at him impassively. Either he did not understand or he didn’t like being told what to do. The thick brows furrowed angrily and he glared back as though pondering a profound metaphysical dilemma. It was such an alarming expression that Makana burned his finger on the lit match he was holding. The man’s fists were balled up tightly – clearly he was the type who resorted to words only when physical violence was ruled out. Before either of them could move or speak, however, another man stepped in over the threshold.
    His suit was in an entirely different category and certainly not purchased at Omar Effendi’s. A more likely guess might have been one of the fancy boutiques of Paris or London. For the price of that suit Makana could have bought the whole houseboat, sent Umm Ali home to her village a happy woman, and still had enough change to buy himself a whole new wardrobe. The man inside this suit was slim and naturally elegant. Around sixty, Makana guessed, with his hair combed back from his fine, even features in a smooth white wave. He glanced around the place with the curiosity of a man who finds himself inexplicably inside the monkey cage at the zoo. Then he snapped his fingers and the big man turned and left without a word, which was good news for a number of reasons, mostly because the floorboards seemed to heave a sigh of relief. In place of the blank expression of the big man, the new arrival was wearing a thin, unpleasant smile that Makana realised wasn’t a smile at all, but a grimace of distaste. Whatever he was smoking actually had tobacco in it by the smell of it. Makana took a step sideways and flicked his valuable second Cleopatra of the day through the low window out of pure shame.
    ‘Why the dramatic entrance?’
    ‘It’s his job,’ said the slim man, distractedly. ‘You are alone, I take it?’ He circled a hand in the air. There was a lot of gold on that hand. Makana had a frying pan hanging in the kitchen about the size of that wristwatch. It answered any nagging queries he still had about the purpose of the gorilla. If you were going to walk around with that much gold on display, you would need a big friend.
    ‘I’m alone. Are you going to explain what this is all about?’
    The slim man seemed to be in a hurry to leave, now that he had seen the place.
    ‘I am just the messenger. Mr Hanafi himself will explain.’
    Makana kept his mouth shut. He didn’t want to look stupid.
    ‘I’ll get dressed,’ he said.
    He went into the bedroom and found his best shirt, picking up the jacket that hung from a nail on the back of his bedroom door and dusting it down for a moment before giving up with a sigh and pulling it on.
    Umm Ali trailed alongside them up the path that led from the awama to the road, still clutching her aubergines in her skirts.
    ‘Everything is all right, I hope, ya bash-muhandis ?’
    ‘Everything is fine, thank you.’
    ‘ Al-hamdoulilah , thank God.’ She was talking to Makana but her eyes never left the other man, whom she clearly suspected of all kinds of deviousness.
    ‘May the Lord preserve you.’
    ‘And may He watch over you and yours, Umm Ali.’
    It wasn’t hard to spot the visitors’ car. When they came